Technical Field
The present invention relates to a medical image display apparatus, method, and program that extracts a tubular tissue region from a three-dimensional image of a subject and displays a three-dimensional image of the tubular issue region.
Background Art
Recently, it has been practiced that tubular tissues, such as large intestines, small intestines, bronchi, blood vessels, and the like, are extracted from three-dimensional images captured by modalities, such as CT (Computed Tomography) systems and the like, and three-dimensional images of the extracted tubular tissues are used in image diagnosis.
For example, in large intestine colonography, a technique is proposed in which, based on a three-dimensional image of a large intestine region, a route of an endoscope passing through the large intestine region is determined, then a virtual endoscopic image is generated which is similar to an image captured by an endoscope by moving the viewpoint along the determined route and actually imaging from each viewpoint, and the route to a target point is navigated by displaying the virtual endoscopic image.